Rijkswaterstaat

Madness reigned on Dutch roads on Tuesday morning. A combination of rainy weather and a large number of accidents caused numerous traffic jams and delays. Both the ANWB and Rijkswaterstaat called it a rush hour record for this year, the Telegraaf reports.

Morning rush hour is expected to be a doozy on Tuesday. The wet autumn weather is expected to cause many traffic jams, according to both Rijkswaterstaat and ANWB, RTL Nieuws reports.

Rijkswaterstaat expects a traffic jam peak of over 300 kilometers on the Dutch highways this morning. By 7:00 a.m. there were already 90 kilometers of traffic jams on the highway, the Public Works department reported.

The A28 highway between Zwolle and Groningen is closed in both directions at Assen after a major accident involving four trucks. Traffic service ANWB expects that the highway will be closed until at least 4:00 p.m. on Friday. Motorists are advised to seek alternative routes, NU.nl reports.

According to the ANWB, the accident caused havoc on the road. One side of the highway is full of mail, which came out of one of the trucks. The other side is full of beets. Exactly how the accident happened is not yet known.

A large shipment of stem cells will be slowly and carefully transported from Leiden to Amsterdam, under police escort, on Wednesday. This is expected to cause some inconvenience for motorists on the A4 highway, where at least one lane will be closed, a spokesperson for blood bank Sanquin told NU.nl.

Multiple accidents caused extreme amounts of traffic on Dutch roads during rush hour on Thursday evening. There was a total of 478 kilometers of traffic jams on the Dutch highways, making Thursday evening the busiest rush hour in the Netherlands so far this year, according to Rijkswaterstaat.

According to the ANWB, which also takes provincial roads into account, there was 887 kilometers of traffic jams on Dutch roads on Thursday evening. According to the ANWB's figures, Thursday evening was the third busiest rush hour this year.

The provinces of Noord-Holland, Zuid-Holland and Utrecht were faced with heavy rainfall on Wednesday. The A20 to Rotterdam had to be closed for several hours due to flooding. Streets in various places were also under water, NU.nl reports.

Public works department Rijkswaterstaat closed the A20 highway at the Kleinpolderplein junction around 11:00 a.m. because the road surface was under water to such an extent that it was unsafe to drive over it. The highway was reopened around 1:15 p.m.

Dutch public works department Rijkswaterstaat spent a million euros on two speedboats that can not be used, Minister Cora van Nieuwenhuizen of Infrastructure and Water Management informed the lower house of Dutch parliament, NOS reports.

An oil spill was discovered off the coast of Vlissingen this weekend. The spill in the Westerschelde is believed to originate from Spyros Armenakis, a Greek ship that sank 800 meters off the Vlissingen boulevard in 1965, Omroep Zeeland reports.

The ship still had fuel on it when it sank. The fuel was largely pumped out years ago, but a small amount remained. Some of it also leaked out four years ago.

The first 41 of 500 swans that were covered in oil after an oil spill in the port of Rotterdam three weeks ago, were released again on Saturday. After the oil leak, the swans spent weeks in a temporary shelter on Maeslantkering in Hoek van Holland, being cleaned and recuperating. More swans will be released in the coming weeks, RTL Nieuws reports

The number of accidents on Dutch highways in the first half of this year increased by a quarter compared to the same period last year, the ANWB reports based on figures from public works department Rijkswaterstaat, ANP reports.

In the first six months of 2017 there were 10 thousand accidents on Dutch highways. This year there were 12,800.

The Dutch Safety Board launched an investigation into an oil tanker colliding with a jetty at the port of Rotterdam on June 23rd. Some 200 tons of oil leaked into the water after the collision. The Safety Board will investigate both the cause of the collision, and the control of environmental damage after the oil spill, NU.nl reports.

The construction of a new sea lock in IJmuiden will take 27 months longer than expected, public works department Rijkswaterstaat announced on Tuesday evening. Builders BAM and VolkerWessels are again pushing millions more into the construction, ANP reports.

BAM reports a cost overrun of around 30 million euros, VolkerWessels 31.5 million euros. It is now expected that the first ships will only be able to use the sea lock in January 2022, instead of next year.

Hundreds of oil covered swans were captured out of the water at Maassluis and taken to a bird shelter on Sunday, following an oil spill in the Derde Petroleum port in Rotterdam on Saturday. Around 15 animal ambulances and several boats from the fire brigade helped to capture the animals. There is great concern that several swans will not survive, RTL Nieuws reports.

Tuesday evening saw the busiest evening rush hour in the Netherlands so far this year. At its peak, there were 955 kilometers of traffic jams on Dutch roads, according to traffic association ANWB.

The traffic jams were mainly caused by bad weather in the south and east of the country, a spokesperson for Dutch public works department Rijkswaterstaat said to ANP. "In addition, almost everyone had off on Monday, making it extra busy on Tuesday", the spokesperson said.

The inland transport of hazardous substances by ship needs more safety measures, the Dutch Safety Board concluded in its investigation into an accident in Grave in December 2016. Then a tanker carrying 2,000 tons of benzene crashed into the John. S. Thompson Bridge over the Maas river during foggy weather, ANP reports.

On Wednesday morning the Ministry of Defense's Explosive Ordnance Disposal team removed a sea mine from the IJ in Amsterdam. The World War II mine, which weighs around 600 kilograms, was discovered in the river late in January. It will be detonated in Markermeer on Wednesday afternoon, NU.nl reports.

A truck crashed into a pillar of a viaduct on te A28 at Leusden-Zuid on Tuesday morning. The highway from Utrecht to Amersfoort is closed, the traffic information services report on twitter.

The accident happened around 10:00 a.m. The truck driver is trapped in the truck, according to the police. The fire department is at the scene, and placed screens around the scene of the accident. A trauma helicopter is also at the scene, AD reports.

The A12 in Den Haag, also called the Utrechtsebaan, is closed in both directions on Thursday morning due to a burst water pipe. The extremely cold weather turned the road into something of an ice rink, the Telegraaf reports.

Since Tuesday nights salt trucks covered over 31 thousand kilometers of roads throughout the Netherlands with around 2 million kilograms of salt. Ice breakers are also on standby, to help any ships that get into trouble on freezing water, Dutch public works department Rijkswaterstaat said.

Throughout the winter, the Rijkswaterstaat already sprinkled some 80 million kilograms of salt on the roads to combat slickness and iciness and thereby keep the roads accessible and safe. "We drove around the world about 33 times this winter", the department said on Twitter.